Sherlock Holmes, Vulcans, and how logic isn’t everything.

Last month, Richard Dawkins said some­thing shit­ty, as he is wont to do. I don’t want to get into his argu­ment here, because it is per­son­al­ly painful for me to do so and I don’t think it’s nec­es­sary for the crux of this post. But it is relat­ed, and so I men­tion it.

I men­tion it because one of the defens­es of his insen­si­tiv­i­ty (to put it mild­ly) was that his argu­ment was log­i­cal­ly sound. And that’s a point that gets brought up an awful lot in dis­cus­sions of social jus­tice and in gen­er­al when some­one is called out for doing some­thing harm­ful. It’s espe­cial­ly a point brought up from men against women, usu­al­ly as a way of gas-light­ing us and say­ing, “You’re too emo­tion­al to get this, let me log­ic at you in a man­ly fash­ion.” It’s sex­ist, it’s dis­mis­sive, and it focus­es on one aspect of a sit­u­a­tion to the exclu­sion of all else.

As I said on Twit­ter in my orig­i­nal thoughts about Dawkins’ ass­hat­tery:

This is the kind of argu­ment I see quite a lot from those who tend to hold a lot of priv­i­lege & expe­ri­en­tial igno­rance of the top­ic at hand. Honestly…it makes me think of that scene in the RDJ/Jude Law Sher­lock Holmes. Holmes is hold­ing some­thing in his hand, the end of which is mere inch­es from Watson’s face. Wat­son: “Get that thing out of my face.” Holmes replies, “It’s not in your face, it’s in my hand.” That’s what these log­i­cal men are like. That’s their argu­ment. TECHNICALLY, they’re right. But the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion & obser­va­tion of the sit­u­a­tion shows that one can be cor­rect but still wrong. In this sit­u­a­tion, the argu­ment can (& has been, repeat­ed­ly) made that Dawkins wasn’t min­i­miz­ing when he was mak­ing the com­par­i­son. TECHNICALLY, he wasn’t. But func­tion­al­ly, he was. Just like the thing TECHNICALLY was in Holmes’ hand but FUNCTIONALLY was in Watson’s face.

I’m rather proud of that anal­o­gy, and I think it quite holds up in gen­er­al in dis­cus­sions of social aware­ness.

Fast for­ward to tonight. It’s been a long day fight­ing anx­i­ety and just being wea­ried in gen­er­al with peo­ple I respect mak­ing the clas­sic blun­der of say­ing “but I’m an ally!!” when faced with cri­tique of their ally­ship. We put on an episode of Voy­ager to have some back­ground noise while we ate din­ner.

The crew of Voy­ager, Cap­tain Janeway in par­tic­u­lar is in a moral dilem­ma. They are strand­ed mul­ti­ple hun­dreds of thou­sands of light-years from their home, and stum­ble upon a civ­i­liza­tion that has tech­nol­o­gy that could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly get them halfway home. The prob­lem is that it’s against the laws of this civ­i­liza­tion to share that tech­nol­o­gy with any­one. Janeway ago­nizes over how to han­dle this news, rec­og­niz­ing that it would be uneth­i­cal to take the tech­nol­o­gy by force, but fear­ing that she is mak­ing her entire crew suf­fer for her ideals. Tuvok, chief secu­ri­ty offi­cer and a Vul­can, serves as Janeway’s moral com­pass and log­i­cal con­sult through­out the episode, and assures her that she is mak­ing the right deci­sion. Then, in a sur­pris­ing turn of events, Tuvok seals a deal to exchange the ship’s library for the tech­nol­o­gy, against the rules of the cul­ture and against Janeway’s express orders. This back­fires spec­tac­u­lar­ly (turns out the tech­nol­o­gy nev­er would have worked with Star Fleet tech), and Janeway learns of her crew’s betray­al.

Tuvok, in his detached and log­i­cal fash­ion, explains that he made his deci­sion out of a desire to spare Janeway pain. His rea­son­ing is that that if he made the trade, it would solve their prob­lem of need­ing to get home with­out impli­cat­ing the cap­tain or caus­ing her to vio­late her prin­ci­ples.

I’ll be hon­est, for most of the episode, I hard­ly paid atten­tion. But sud­den­ly I couldn’t stop watch­ing. This was a sto­ry I rec­og­nized, and I won­dered what direc­tion it would take.

Janeway is stunned and angry. She tells Tuvok how impor­tant his rela­tion­ship is to her, and how that close­ness they share has made his actions all the more unac­cept­able. “You can use log­ic to jus­ti­fy almost any­thing. That’s its pow­er — and its flaw.”

I sat with bat­ed breath to see what would hap­pen. This was the part of the con­ver­sa­tion when nor­mal­ly some­one like Tuvok would retort, “You’re too emo­tion­al about this. I only did the log­i­cal thing. You just can’t see it clear­ly.”

Instead, he replies, “My log­ic was not in error…but I was.”

My log­ic was not in error, but I was.

My logic was not in error, but I was.

It’s so suc­cinct. It’s so on point.

And it is exact­ly the sort of thing a decent human being ought to say when called on the car­pet for harm­ful behav­ior.

Buy my stuff!

Photo Evidence (Instagram)

A Few Notes

Everything written here is my opinion, not endorsed by any employer or person professionally or personally affiliated with me. Basically, I’m responsible for the content here — no one else is. Come to me if you need to talk about it.

Along those lines, all displayed artwork & materials are my intellectual property unless otherwise stated. That’s why you have to ask permission before using any of my work. If you’re using it editorially, ask permission, then cite and credit me for my work.

Don’t steal my stuff. As a freelance designer & artist (and part-time adjunct teaching), I absolutely depend on the income I earn through my work. If you like something, buy it. If you want me to teach you how to do it, hire me.